Nottingham Forest proved they can do the ugly side of the game, as well as play pretty football, as they ground out a 1-0 win over Sunderland, says Mark Warburton.

The Reds boss saw his side show their character and mental strength to hold out for their first clean sheet on the road since a 0-0 draw at Wigan last February, in a victory that required different qualities from Warburton’s side.

Forest, for once, did not always play the brand of attacking football that they were capable of, at the Stadium of Light.

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“Yet what we do normally do well, we did not do well tonight, if that makes sense. We did not move the ball with dynamism and hurt them. When we did, we hurt them and opened them up.

“We have to recognise what we do well. We dominate possession, we move the ball quickly with one and two-touch football. When we do that, we can take the pressure off. When we do that, we look like a good team.”

Warburton said the Forest players had been keen to answer the questions asked of them, following a start to the season that had seen six of the 11 goals they had conceded come from set-pieces.

“The players are human. They hear criticism and they do not like conceding goals. They have heard everyone talking about set-pieces. Tonight, they stood up and, in the last five minutes, you saw them have free-kick after free-kick and endless set-pieces. But we stood up to it and that was important,” he said.

Nottingham Forest's Daryl Murphy celebrates firing in the only goal of the game (Image: Dan Westwell)

“I am delighted for them and delighted for the fans, who gave the team magnificent backing again. It is a long journey in awful weather and I can’t speak highly enough of them.

“I felt like we had a foothold in the game after 20 minutes. You could sense the frustration in the crowd, but we also felt as though we were still in second gear, at half-time.

“It was a game we had to win and we kept a clean sheet. This is a big club and we collected three valuable points. We will move on from here.

“This is a new squad; this is a young squad. They take criticism to heart and they get angry. They wanted to come here and win.

“We will learn from this and be better for it. We defended and we showed character.”